


Safe is a four-letter word

by Umi_no_arawashi



Series: Being normal is overrated, anyway [3]
Category: Dredd (2012), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: General emotional clumsiness, Kylux-adjacent, M/M, Matt being heroic, Sexual Harassment, Techie being brave and ressourceful, Techienician, but Matt saves the day, soft bunny Techie on a mission
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:47:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27102943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umi_no_arawashi/pseuds/Umi_no_arawashi
Summary: Matt left his glasses behind.Techie knows something has to be done about that, but what?
Relationships: Clan Techie (Dredd)/Matt the Radar Technician, background Kylux - Relationship
Series: Being normal is overrated, anyway [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1973833
Comments: 14
Kudos: 80





	Safe is a four-letter word

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to _Softness, deadlier than knives_ and _Sharper than a serpent's tooth_ , and will probably make more sense if you read those first.

Techie looked at the folded up pair of glasses cautiously.

They looked very strange, very out of place, almost alien, on the dark wood of the sharply rectangular coffee table Armie had put in the living room.

Techie was sitting directly on the plush white carpet, knees bent in front of him, legs splayed out away from him in a W shape, and his eyes were exactly level with the table. The black wood stretched out in front of him, smooth and sleek, handsomely striated, and in the middle - 

Matt’s glasses.

Matt’s glasses, that Armie had called the ugliest thing ever when he’d shouted at Techie, before Kylo made him stop.

Techie didn't see what was so ugly about them. It was true that one of the lenses was a little chipped on one side, and the metal frame was a little bit crooked, so they didn’t sit very straight. Maybe that was what Armie didn’t like about them. Armie, Techie had noticed, always liked things with neat, sharp angles or perfect geometric shapes. He didn’t like things that were crooked, or messy, or colourful.

Or at least most of the time. Because Armie also liked Kylo, who was pretty much a walking mess, loud and unpredictable and completely unconcerned with keeping things neat, and he liked Techie, who liked colours and small spaces full of stuff.

Armie was a bit complicated, sometimes.

Like last night. Armie had been so sad and scared, and Techie hadn’t been able to find the right words to explain to him how absurd it was to even imagine Kylo might actually be mad at him because of that text. How absurd it was to imagine Kylo might possibly stay mad at Armie for more than five seconds, in fact.

That was the thing Armie liked best about Kylo. He had a lot of good qualities. He respected Techie’s privacy, he didn’t mind when Techie didn’t want to talk, he didn’t call him weird or stupid, he didn’t try to touch him or hug him unexpectedly, he was funny and interesting and smelled nice, like leather and cigarettes but in a _nice_ way, not an overpowering way. But best of all, it was completely obvious to Techie that he worshipped the ground Armie walked on.

And that, in Techie’s opinion, made him a very nice person to have around.

Also, Kylo was good at explaining things to Armie when Techie couldn’t quite find the words. Like with Matt’s glasses.

Techie sighed and rested his chin on the table, still staring at the glasses, vaguely aware that this distance it made his eyes cross a bit.

Armie had _not_ been happy to hear about Matt.

Techie had known, from the start, Armie wouldn’t like it. But he’d explored all possible options. Dating apps were impossibly intimidating. Meeting someone outside was out of the question. Finding someone online… well, given the fact Techie felt shy about leaving notes to himself in his code, he wasn’t about to start chatting to strangers, was he? 

But this… it was simple. You didn’t have to make anyone like you, or find you interesting. You just had to say what you wanted, like ordering a pizza. So he’d ordered Matt, because at the instant he’d seen Matt’s pictures, he knew this was exactly what he wanted.

Matt was gorgeous. Matt was tall, Matt was full of muscles that made Techie’s mouth water, Matt’s cock was so perfect it gave Techie this fluttery, breathless sort of feeling to look at, and Matt had this _look_ , this sort of serious, sober look, that said “I’m not the kind of person who makes fun. I’m not the kind of person who laughs, and points, and calls people names.”

Techie had gotten very good at detecting _those_.

Then again, he’d still been a little worried just before, because after all a picture was one thing, but sometimes people were different in real life, and so he’d been a little scared when he’d opened the door and found Matt.

But Matt had been perfect. Perfect. If Techie closed his eyes, he could still feel it, Matt’s cock in his mouth, warm and real, a little bitter, a little salty, utterly perfect. Matt in him, so much better than anything he’d tried before, alive and hot and throbbing, and he didn’t know how he was supposed to live without that now, it had been so much better than fucking himself with one of his dildos. 

And he could still feel Matt’s hands on him, on his naked skin. 

That had been surprising. Usually he hated, absolutely hated when people touched him. The only person he could tolerate was Armie, sometimes. And then, not Armie’s hands on him, or his arms around him. But sometimes when he sat next to Armie, he’d feel like resting his head against Armie’s shoulder, and that was alright. A few times, Armie had tried - carefully, because Armie was always very nice - stroking his hair a little, and that was _sometimes_ alright. Nice, even.

But Matt’s hands had felt good. Reassuring, not overwhelming. They held him in a way that seemed grounding and not crushing. And at the end, when he was lying flat on Matt’s chest, those gorgeous muscles hard under him, Matt’s chest rising and falling quickly as he was trying to catch his breath, and Matt’s arms were locked tight around him, Techie had felt -

Techie had felt safe.

So it was very unfair, really, that Armie had been so mad about the whole thing. Because what Armie had been mad about was precisely that. That it was _un_ safe. That Techie had let some stranger into his place, some stranger who could have hurt him, or robbed him, or murdered him. Armie had shouted a lot about that, despite Techie trying to tell him that no. It was safe. He’d made sure of that.

Thankfully Kylo had stepped in and made Armie stop yelling for a bit so Techie could explain. It took a while, because Techie was a little shaken, and couldn’t quite find his words, but finally, he’d managed. 

He’d showed them what he’d done, to check that Matt was safe enough to let into his place.

And Armie and Kylo had looked at the screen with this slightly stunned, worried expression, as Techie pulled up some of what he’d found. Matt’s driving licence. Matt’s student registration. Matt’s transcript from the college where he was a second-year, studying engineering. Matt’s birth certificate. Several pictures of his childhood home and the place he lived now, from Google maps and other sources. His mother’s social network accounts, because Matt didn’t seem to have any (she, on the other hand, was the type to post recipes and forward memes about kittens.) Matt’s student debt. Matt’s client history with the escort service he worked for. Matt’s Reddit account, where he posted a lot of long serious posts about slightly obscure video games, mostly strategy and things to do with space exploration. And last but not least, Matt’s total lack of any kind of police record.

Then Armie and Kylo had sort of looked at each other, and then weirdly the conversation had shifted to how Techie had found this stuff. He tried to explain, but he could tell they just weren’t following his explanations. In the end he told them, as simply as he could, that most places’ internet security was just not very good. 

(Not Armie’s though. He felt sorry for the idiot who would ever try to break into Armie’s company’s system. He’d designed the security himself, from scratch.)

That had seemed to satisfy them somewhat, although Armie did ask whether any of this was illegal. And that was a little difficult to answer, so Techie sort of floundered there for a while before Kylo asked the really important question: was anyone likely to find out?

That, on the other hand, was easy to answer. 

No. Of course no one would ever find out. Techie felt a little offended Kylo even had to ask the question, in fact. He knew what he was doing.

Anyway, in the end, Armie had been forced to admit that Matt did not seem like he was a serial killer, even though he didn’t exactly look happy about the whole thing either. Then Kylo told Techie that he didn’t have to worry about it, that Armie would have been upset anyway because he just didn’t want to think about his little brother having sex, and Armie had turned an interesting shade of red, and Kylo said he wanted to go upstairs and had dragged Armie out of Techie’s place. And Techie had just curled up on his bed, which still smelled faintly of Matt, and gone to sleep, because all of that had been exhausting.

Now it was morning. Armie was at work, Kylo was on a plane to Toronto, and Techie was sitting in his living room, staring at Matt’s glasses, wondering what he should do about them.

He could sort of see himself reflected in the lenses, if he moved his head just _so_. Two little Techies, staring at him with a puzzled expression.

Matt didn’t have his number, and even though Techie had very easily found out Matt’s, he couldn’t possibly imagine calling. Or texting. How could he possibly explain how he’d found Matt’s number? And he’d looked on the site, but he couldn’t book Matt again, or at least not soon enough, because Matt was apparently taken all week. Or busy. Unavailable, anyway. Yet Matt’s glasses were there, on Techie’s table, and something had to be done about that.

Suddenly, he took a deep breath and sat up. It was simple. He would just bring them back.

He had Matt's address. All Techie had to do was go there, and drop the glasses off. After all, when he’d checked Matt’s place on streetview, he’d noticed there were individual mailboxes, right outside the building. Yes, Matt would probably wonder why his glasses suddenly reappeared in his mail, but he would have no way to ask Techie any difficult questions about it, since Techie would be long gone by the time Matt came back home (and that would be very easy to arrange, since he had Matt’s class schedule.) And Matt would have his glasses back, which was the important part.

So there. Techie had a plan.

It was a little more complicated than that, of course. Because in order to put the glasses inside Matt’s mailbox, he’d have to get there. Which meant going outside. Taking public transport, because he certainly didn’t want to get into someone’s car. But it might mean having to be places where people might want him to talk, or interact with them, and that was going to require some planning. 

He went to prepare.

Twenty minutes later, Techie was ready. He had his favourite clothes on. One of the comfortable yellow shirts he liked because they were long and covered his hands and also because a shirt like that had been the first thing Armie had given him when they’d been reunited. A nice pair of jeans that didn’t make his legs look too skinny. The boots Kylo had brought him once, that were really cool and heavy and even had a little bit of a heel on them which made Techie feel more powerful. And over it all, he had the biggest hooded sweatshirt he owned, the hood pulled up over his head so he was safe and hidden. 

He also had his phone plugged into his biggest set of headphones, the noise-cancelling ones, and he was playing some of Kylo’s music. He liked Kylo’s music. It was all about fighting the system and being true to oneself and not taking anything from anybody, and even though Techie had no idea where he’d start with any of that, he approved of the idea in general. And Kylo always sounded really strong, even when singing about heartache and sadness and doubt, and it made Techie feel a little brave, as though somehow he had some of that strength.

Slung over one shoulder, he had the messenger bag Armie had brought back for him once, bright orange with a silly rainbow with a smile on it on the front. It was the most un-Armie thing ever, yet he’d seen it and thought Techie might like it and bought it, and Techie had loved it so much he thought he’d cry. 

And in the bag, he had Matt’s glasses.

All in all, he felt a little like a knight in armour going to war. Yes, it was scary, but he had protection.

His hand barely trembling, he reached for his door handle.

* * *

At first, everything was fine. When he walked outside, everyone seemed too busy to look at him or care that he was there, which was great. He walked in his little sound bubble, surrounded by the nice comfortable feeling of Kylo’s voice, cut off from the world by the hood of his sweatshirt. He kept his eyes on the ground in front of him. That way, he only had to deal with a small portion of the outside, those few feet around him, and he could safely ignore the rest. He knew where the metro station was, he’d been there before, once, to go pick up a piece of electronic equipment that he couldn’t have delivered. He’d done really well that one time. He felt sure he could do it again.

Of course, this time, he’d have to go a lot farther. Matt’s place was far, almost twice as far as the furthest he’d ever gone from Armie’s place. But at this time of day, the train wasn’t crowded, and he found a space to sit in a corner where he felt sure no one could possibly stand right behind him, or too close to him, at least not without him having a chance to move before they reached him. 

He still felt jittery every time the train stopped. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop himself from looking up every time at the people coming in, wondering if they were going to be alright, just normal people going about their days, or if they were going to want to talk to him, or ask him for something, or do something he wouldn’t like. And every time, he could feel his nervousness rise, just a little bit, a tightness in his throat that crept up until he started feeling like he was having trouble breathing. 

Mercifully, just as he thought he wouldn’t be able to stand it anymore (which was stupid, nothing had happened, everyone had been normal, why did he have to be like that all the time?), the train reached his stop, and Techie rushed out, stopping to breathe the air on the platform as though he’d just surfaced from water. But he’d survived. He’d done step one: take the train down to Matt’s neighbourhood.

Now came the tricky part. He’d looked up the directions very carefully, and of course he had his phone to guide him, but still. This was an unknown neighbourhood. There could be complications. Surprises.And if there was one thing Techie hated above all others, it was surprises.

But actually, once he’d gotten his bearings, everything went alright. The neighborhood was a lot more run-down than where Armie lived, but Techie had lived in some pretty terrible places after their parents died, and this wasn’t that bad. Just sort of messy, with graffiti on the walls and rubbish left half-hazardly in the street, and a few street-people living in little cardboard tents in some places. But people like that didn’t worry Techie. They were often kind, if you got to know them, and they were almost always harmless. Once, when he’d run away from a particularly bad group home, he’d ended up living with a kind homeless old man for two weeks, and he and his friend had been a lot nicer to Techie than the people that were supposed to take care of him in the home.

Techie had always been a lot more scared of the _normal_ people. 

But it was not yet late afternoon, so there weren’t a lot of people in the street, and so he was actually feeling pretty good when he reached Matt’s place. It was a small building, sort of square and squat, two stories with two flats on each, according to Techie’s research (he’d even been able to pull up a floor plan of one of the flats, from a rental agency that clearly didn’t know how to clean up their cached pages.) The mailboxes were exactly where they’d been in the picture, and Techie bounded gleefully up to the house, almost skipping in happiness. Everything had gone perfectly.

Apart from a small detail. 

Techie stood in front of the mailboxes, Matt’s glasses in one hand, the other holding the flap of Matt’s mailbox open. It was obviously too thin, just thin enough to let an envelope in and that was all. There was no way Matt’s glasses would fit in there. 

He chewed on his lip, thinking. There had to be a solution, but what?

And then, disaster struck. Behind him, someone whistled, loudly, one of those ugly wolf-whistles men did around girls sometimes, and Techie jumped. Quickly, he stuffed Matt’s glasses back into his bag and turned around. 

It was three men. Three men, looking _normal_ , looking like young people wandering the street, students, maybe, looking vaguely amused, vaguely aggressive, and looking at him. And worse than all, they looked like they were bored. They looked like they were looking for fun. And sometimes, as Techie knew very well, that sort of person was dangerous. Because sometimes, the kind of fun they were looking for was not Techie’s idea of anything fun. Sometimes, what that type of people wanted was something small and harmless to torment.

And Techie, who often felt very small and harmless, feared those kinds of people above all others.

“Hello, little girl,” said the middle one, the one who was slightly shorter than the other two and was wearing a baseball cap. “You lost, or something?”

Making sure his back was to the wall so no one could sneak up on him, Techie drew himself up to his full height, trying to look as determined as he could.

“I’m n-not a girl,” he said. Sometimes that worked. A lot of people thought he was a girl, at first, and then lost interest when they found out he wasn’t.

But the man with the baseball cap just smirked. He had a small, ugly little moustache, sandy-blonde, like his hair. “That’s a shame. Has anyone told you you’d make a real pretty girl?”

“No,” lied Techie. People had said that before, but never in a nice way. He took a deep breath and tried to think of what he should say. He should tell them to leave him alone. He should tell them to go away. But like every time he got scared, words seemed to escape him. “I…,” he started. “You…. You should…”

“Hey, girly-boy, I have a proposal for you. Wanna be my girlfriend?” said that man again, and the one next to him, a tall thin one with bad teeth, snickered. “I’d treat you real well. Buy you pretty dresses, make-up, all that shit. How about it?”

Techie tried to speak, but his voice wouldn’t come. Instead, he shook his head, as hard as he could. The worst part was that Techie knew they weren’t even being serious, that this was just a joke to them, that if he didn’t react, they’d get bored and move on, but there was nothing he could do to stop himself. People like that made his skin crawl.

“Ah, come on, baby, don’t be like that. I’ll be real nice, you’ll see.”

“No,” Techie finally managed to say. He clenched his fists, trying to gather his strength. The men moved closer, boxing him in. The short one leant against the wall nonchalantly, a cocky smile on his lips. Then he reached out to Techie, arm outstretched, as though to stroke his cheek, and  
Techie freaked out completely. 

“Get away from me!” he screamed shrilly, pushing the man’s hand away from him as hard as he could.

Instead of leaving him alone, all three of them started laughing, mean, mocking laughs. “Damn,” said the third one, the fat one, “cool down, honey. Nobody’s hurting you. What are you, a freak or something?”

The thin one snickered again behind his ugly teeth. “Yeah, you a freak, girly-boy?” He snapped his fingers, as though realising something. “Oh, damn! You wouldn’t be crazy Matt’s girlfriend, would you?”

“You know what, I think you’re right!” said the short one. “You Matt’s little girlfriend? Makes sense, makes sense…Except you’re way too pretty for ol’ crazy Matt. Then again, if you’re a freak like he is…”

That word again, and Techie had enough, enough of those mean stupid people and their stupid mean little minds and their cruel laugh. “I,” he screamed at the top of his lungs, “I AM NOT A FREAK!”

All three took a step back, like they’d suddenly been bitten by something. 

He took a deep breath. “I AM NOT A FREAK AND MATT IS NOT CRAZY. JUST… LEAVE ME ALONE! JUST GO AWAY! I... I DON’T WANT TO SPEAK TO YOU ANYMORE!!”

He stood, panting, his fists clenched inside his sleeves, his entire body shaking.

But they didn’t leave. Instead, their faces turned serious, as though they didn’t like to see their prey fighting back. As though they were wolves, and the rabbit they’d been chasing had just suddenly growled at them.

“Now look here, girly-boy...” said the smaller one, his tone cold now, and he shoved Techie hard, hard enough for him to fall to the ground on his ass, and it hurt. “If you think….” 

He sounded like he wanted to say a lot more than that, he sounded scary and looked scary and Techie had no idea what to do anymore, when suddenly there was a tall shape behind him and someone was lifting him by the collar and Techie looked up to see who it was and-

It was Matt.

It was Matt, with the setting sun right behind him, bathed in golden-red light, and Techie had never seen such a beautiful thing in his entire life.

“What the fuck are you doing in front of my house again, Jeremy?” growled Matt, sounding so strong and sure of himself that Techie got little goosebumps on the skin of his arms. Then Matt looked down, squinted, and looked at Techie with the strangest expression on his face. “...You?” he said, as though this was the last thing he’d expected.

“Hey, come on, Matt,” said the fat one, “Let Jeremy down, please, man. We weren’t bothering your… friend, or whatever, we were just… talking…?”

Then Matt did this _thing_ , where he just lifted the guy that was apparently called Jeremy up with one arm, as though he weighed nothing, and sort of twisted, and then slammed him into the ground, as hard as he could. Techie actually saw the very second Jeremy’s lip split on the hard concrete of the pavement and one of his teeth flew off, broken clean out of his head, and a small, petty part of him cheered at that.

Then Matt stepped in front of Techie, back to him, chest heaving and fists clenched. “Fuck off,” he said, his tone very low and controlled. “All of you, fuck off. I never want to see you near my house again.”

The short guy with the ugly moustache picked himself up from the curb, bleeding from the mouth. “Fugh yhou, Maff, you cravvy freak,” he said, spitting out blood. “Yhou didn’t haff to do thaff! I wafn’t doing…”

“Fuck off,” said Matt again, snarling, this time, and just like that, just like magic, they were gone, running away, almost falling other each other in their haste to get out of there, and Techie looked up at Matt’s silhouette, bathed in gold from the sunset, and he realised one very important thing:

He was absolutely and totally in love with Matt. 

“Fuckers,” said Matt, and he turned around to face Techie. “Are you alright? What are you doing here?” he asked, frowning, and Techie also realised that there was no easy way to explain why he was there, and that Matt was going to hate him when he found out what Techie had done. 

“I…” he started. Then he thought perhaps it would be easier to show Matt, so he opened his bag to look inside, and that’s when he found out that when the horrible small man had pushed him to the ground, he had fallen right on the bag, and now the glasses were all squashed. He shut the bag hurriedly and sort of hid it behind his back, as though it would make it go away. But he still had to say something. “I…,” he started again. His eyes were stinging with tears. Now not only would he have to explain to Matt he’d completely violated his privacy, but he’d also destroyed his glasses. “I… I’m sorry!” he wailed, and then suddenly he was crying, there was no stopping it, he was crying in great, ugly sobs, and now he wouldn’t even be able to explain.

Matt looked at him in alarm. “Hey. Are you okay? Did they hurt you?” he said, kneeling down to take a better look at Techie, his eyes suddenly deadly serious. “If they so much as touched you, I’ll…”

Techie shook his head vehemently. “N-no,” he managed between two sobs. “No, I’m.. I’m okay.”

Matt extended his hand, as though he was going to touch Techie, but then it looked like he thought better of it and pulled it back. “Do you want a cup of tea?” he asked abruptly instead.

That stopped Techie’s crying for a second. He blinked. “A-a… what?”

“A cup of tea. You don’t have to. But it might make you feel better. I have a lot of different kinds. I like tea.”

“Uh,” said Techie, who didn’t really know what to say to that.

“In your room, I saw you liked coffee, but I don’t have any of that. It makes me jittery. But I have tea. Do you want some?”

Techie thought for a second. He wasn’t sure if he really wanted tea or not, but he couldn’t stay here either, crying in front of Matt’s house. 

“If you don’t want to come in, that’s fine,” said Matt. “I can bring you a mug out here.”

That decided it. It was growing cold, and Techie wasn’t going to make Matt stay outside all evening just because he was terrible at life in general and wasn’t able to explain what he was doing there like a normal person would.

“No,” he sniffed, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands to dry some of the tears away. “No. If it’s okay, I’d like to come in, please.”

“Okay.” Matt stood up, then he held out his hand. “If you want, I can help you stand up. If you don’t want to, it’s okay. You said you didn’t like to be touched, so...”

“I…” Techie looked up at Matt, kind gentle Matt who had remembered that, who’d been careful not to grab him when he wasn’t ready, and there was this warm, fuzzy sort of feeling in his chest, and he didn’t feel like crying anymore. He felt brave. He reached out to grab Matt’s hand, and it was just as strong and large as he’d remembered, and he held Techie’s hand carefully but securely, like he was never going to let it go, and it was so _nice_ that Techie almost forgot he was supposed to stand up and not just sit there on the cold pavement holding Matt’s hand forever.

**Author's Note:**

> uminoarawashi at tumblr.com if you want to chat. I don’t post anything specific, but I’m very open to fic recs or random fandom related musings!
> 
> I also love chatting randomly in the comments, so if you feel like leaving one, don’t hesitate!!


End file.
